Driving back from the East, madly trying to get back to Cape Town in time to drop off the car and not have to worry about finding a safe place for it during the night, I saw something that utterly transformed my impression of a banal space that I had always taken for granted and thought was either wasted, or deserted or both... the grass islands where expressways meet, on-ramps converge and service roads end.
In the outskirts of Cape Town there are massive shanty-towns with very spotty entrances/exits, which means that people walk kilometres, jump fences and-- mum, close your eyes-- dash across 4 lane highways to get home after work. When you drive into these zones, the normally plain and static highway architecture suddenly becomes vibrant, chaotic and disturbing fluid... you have to avoid people running in front of you and, at the same time, resist the temptation to watch in the rear view mirror to see if the next group made it or not... because there may be more people in front of you.
But people crossing carriageways happens everywhere here in South Africa... what was singularly different about this particular area, though, was that when we passed the green verges, we saw groups of kids on them... and they weren't just sitting or hanging out, they were running, jumping and playing soccer... Simple really, given the lack of green space in the township housing area... So their means of compensating has been to occupy the most readily available piece of grass... and reclaim a space that is never used, except by grasscutters (a trip back in time for me) and illegal garbage dumpers. They have brought to life a dead space that previously only held blank aesthetic value -- a green frame for the concrete roads. Still, if the ball goes out of bounds here, it is really out of bounds... completely dangerously so...
But what does one do when there is no alternative?
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